Poem: I remember everything

I remember everything…

I remember everything

I remember everything
promise, vow, commitment, engagement
Name it
Kept every one, no exceptions

Afloat in mild night air, seventeen
I knew I’d love her for all my life
Can still feel the joy
of my heart swelling, filling my body
Nothing prepares you for a first love
Heaven opens its gates, invites you in
God fuses hearts, never to be sundered
hands feeling, feet off the ground

I never betrayed the promise
ten years later, her at the door
flash switch in a dream within a dream
In love before a word was spoken
a smile stays with me forever

Rockies break the western horizon
False clouds turn hard and high
My country and all that
purple mountains hogwash
spiked my veins
Imagined comes true

The child, new life before dawn
weightless in my arms
damp human warmth
leaves me for another love
Sworn to last, turned to hate

But I remember and honor every promise
every vow in the night, never in vain
until the universe shifts
and you’re talking to a world
where no one hears
Every mountain built on shifting sands
Time betrays us all
makes liars of the most faithful
as everything changes, shifting
rinsing and washing and leaving
us with lonely intent
willing to be faked out again
by the frauds of history
shifting sands and all

But true